Hell Is Other Planets

How our image of Venus went from paradise to hell— and possibly back.

- Julie Novakova

Venus today seems like an embodiment of Hell. Its surface temperatures and pressures would quickly kill even the most resilient Earth microbes. It’s scorched dry and inhospitable. The thick sulfurous clouds never part to allow a glimpse of the Sun from the surface.

This is the image Mariner 2 and other probes brought us since 1962. Before, though, our image of Venus could not have been more different.

Back in 1918, the Swedish physicist, chemist, and Nobel laureate Svante Arrhenius wrote about Venus: “A great part of the surface of Venus is no doubt covered with swamps . . . The constantly uniform climatic conditions which exist everywhere result in an entire absence of adaptation to changing exterior conditions. Only low forms of life are therefore represented . . .”

He was by no means alone in thinking so. Many scientists of that time considered Venus a potentially habitable place. It was similar to Earth in size, its surface could not be seen, and the ever-present clouds could have easily been water vapor.